Ventilative cooling potential based on climatic condition and building thermal characteristics

We introduce a new method for defining ventilative cooling potential (VCP) for office buildings that depends not only on the climatic conditions but also on building thermal characteristics. The energy savings from ventilative cooling differs from building to building; therefore, VCP should be able to represent the actual energy savings—though not perfectly—in order to guide optimization of ventilative cooling parameters during the initial design stage.
In this paper, we proposed the VCP with temperature shift index representing building thermal characteristics. The temperature shift is based on the adaptive thermal comfort region shifted in the psychrometric chart. The index of temperature shift can be determined by the balance temperature difference of the building, which is defined as the heat gain in the building divided by the thermal loss characteristics of the building envelope.
To validate the concept, we conducted simulations using a model office building in four representative cities during summer climates: tropical, dry–semi-arid, Mediterranean, and continental. Using energy analysis software, we calculated the amount of energy consumed in each case of ventilative cooling whenever possible compared to the energy consumed by solely mechanical cooling during summer. Comparisons were made on a weekly basis. Results demonstrate a strong correlation between energy savings and VCP in cases when a proper balance temperature difference was applied.